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I hate to spoil your mood - but it is currently unclear whether agents can be self-aware. And it's very likely something that can never be known.

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How would one define self-awareness?

Well - yes - there is no agreed upon definition. Which makes the issue even harder to clearly determine.

Please explain how it is "unclear" that agents "can be self-aware"? As Wikipedia would say, citation needed. Just because an agent can write convincing enough to convince you that it's "self-aware" doesn't mean it really is, in fact, self-aware.

Well - it's not hard to find. But ok:

Birch, The Edge of Sentience (2024), ch. 16 - "simply no way to assess sentience in an LLM"

Schwitzgebel, AI and Consciousness, (2025) — "we won't know before we've already manufactured thousands or millions of disputably conscious AI".

Butlin, Long et al., Consciousness in Artificial Intelligence: Insights from the Science of Consciousness, (2023) — "no obvious technical barriers to building AI systems which satisfy these indicators".

Let me know if you need more.

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